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Crown of Curses | |
Area | Preloop |
Pro/Con: | A lot more Cursed Chests |
Tech
For the sake of this article, this will cover all aspects of cursed chests as the crowns effects are very simple. The pro & con are on the same line as cursed chests both can benefit and hurt the player, as listed below.
Strategies
Crown of Curses is the crown that is closest to vanilla gameplay. The only difference is the addition of cursed chests, so this article will instead go over cursed weapon strategies as it's applicable to all crowns, just that it's the most frequent with CoCurses.
The benefit behind cursed weapons is having the chance to see weapons from higher drop pools sooner. Some areas can be trivialized by a good weapon, especially if it's not normally seen at that point within preloop. However while running a cursed weapon, there is always a chance that a preferred non-cursed weapon alternative could drop that the player may have to miss out on depending on their secondary weapon, so when picking up a cursed weapon the player should weigh their odds on whether or not it is worth taking.
Weapons being cursed is not an actively awful downside, just having the potential to occasionally miss out on a better weapon, if the player is only taking good cursed weapons to begin with. The game also gives multiple places to uncurse; within preloop 3-2 and 5-2 vaults are always available, as well as looping to 0-1 L1. Constantly leveling up gives chances to see Last Wish if uncursing is necessary; though it should be noted that going to the 3-? or 5-? areas will skip their respective vault level counterparts.
CoCurses is generally seen as the best crown to take within preloop as the downside can actively be worked around, and increasing chances for better weapons sooner is always welcome. Taking the crown to 1-2 L1 is recommended, as there it can be swapped out for a loop crown, but also happens to be the last area curses can be a benefit for the drop pool, as the last weapons are added on 2-1 L1 which curses gives a chance to see 2 areas earlier.
Cursed weapons are also the conditions for cursed weapon drops/cursed caves, which both give their own benefits at great risk to the player.
Firstly cursed ammo drops, which only appear if carrying two cursed weapons at the time. Carrying just one is usually recommended in case a good weapon drop is seen, however going both can result in an ammo boost from cursed pickups. However they always explode upon despawning so can run a risk to the player of accidentally killing themselves; as they need to be directly walked over in order to collect they can easily be overlooked if tunnel visioning an enemy. Extra awareness should be applied here to avoid accidental damage.
Cursed Crystal Caves (link later) has its own article for its own strategies, however a brief summary is that it's one of the most dangerous areas in the game as laser crystals can teleport and instantly kill the player, and crystal spiders sometimes duplicating upon death can situationally lead to major ammo concerns. The trade-off is a small kill boost for score chasers, but more importantly within preloop guarantees higher leveling before entering the Frozen City, and the cursed ammo chest is a nice boost.
If hoping to avoid the Cursed Crystal Caves, it's a simple matter of uncursing at the 3-2 vault(if started with the crown), or simply skipping the cursed weapon that appears on 3-3. If the cursed weapon gets dragged into the level exit portal then it can safely be picked up on 4-1 without changing the area in any way.
Once the drop pool is filled out by Loop 1 Sewers the main benefit of cursed weapons diminishes. However, cursed weapons can still be utilized if wanting to get cursed ammo pickups still or visit the Cursed Crystal Caves in loop. Note though, once three vaults are visited in a run they will no longer spawn, meaning that once a full mutation set is gotten any character(besides Robot) cannot discard of cursed weapons until looping again, meaning that accidentally picking one up can have potentially run ending consequences - especially when in deeploop.